Sonic Origins Plus is just around the corner, launching on Switch this week on June 23rd, 2023. Along with adding a bunch of additions to the base Sonic Origins game, including Amy as a playable character and 12 Game Gear titles, it also marks the first instance the collection has been given a full physical release.
As such, copies have already made their way off store shelves and into the hands of eager fans, and it seems some folks aren't happy with how Sega has handled certain aspects of the game. Some complaints seem quite valid to us, though others might be a tad nit-picky. We'll let you be the judge.
Let's start with Amy first. It's been discovered, naturally, that Amy can turn into Super Amy after collecting all seven Chaos Emeralds, just like Sonic and Co. A few have pointed out, however, that Amy's 'Super' form simply offers up a slight change in colour rather than a wholly redesigned sprite.
A fair assessment, yes? Well, not quite... As pointed out in the tweet below, Sonic is the only character to receive a sprite redesign when morphing into his 'Super' form. All other characters, including Tails, Knuckles, Mighty, and Ray, have similarly only received a basic change in colour to denote the power-up.
That's not all, though, because it seems players are also not happy with how the character select screen works, and we can sort of see where they're coming from with this one. As you can see in the tweet below, the available characters are all laid out in a row, including three combinations that add Tails into the mix.
"That looks fine", you might think. Yes, it's not a major issue, but previous Sonic games, including the likes of Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic Mania, feature separate save slots that let you cycle through the available characters. It's certainly a more elegant solution than what we've got in Sonic Origins Plus, and if nothing else, it just highlights the fact that we can't play as Sonic and Amy together. Weird, huh?
Finally, fans aren't best pleased with how the Game Gear titles sound in the new collection. While certainly passable on its own, there's a definite difference between the sound from the original Game Gear releases and this new collection. Observe:
Sounds quite echoey, right? Granted, it's not offensively bad by any stretch of the imagination, but those who played the original releases will most certainly notice the difference.
Hey, the point is, Sonic fans have high standards. We're not convinced, however, that Sonic Origins Plus is going to wind up being the disaster that some are predicting. We'll find out for sure, however, when the game launches later this week.